RIALTO: Fireworks company ready to paint the skies

Jim Souza, head of the Rialto fireworks firm Pyro Spectaculars, was on the phone in early June, talking about a fireworks show. A 2015 fireworks show.

That’s not unusual.

“I was on the phone last year talking to suppliers about shows next year,” Souza said.

This year’s Fourth of July extravaganzas – the company is putting on more than 400 fireworks displays from sea to sea – already are set to go.

Not that there isn’t a lot of work to be done between now and Friday.

“Four hundred shows means 400 trucks, 400 drivers, 400 sites, 400 set-ups, and each site has its own uniqueness,” Souza said. “We’re here to give everyone a great show. And behind the scenes, there’s a lot of work that goes into that.”

And every year, Pyro Spectaculars strives to offer something new.

“We always try to have something different,” Souza said. “This year there will be butterflies, dice, flying dragons, jellyfish, starfish and a lot of whistling effects and flying stars.”

The Souza family has been in the fireworks business through five generations, starting in the early 1900s when Manuel de Sousa brought his family to the San Francisco Bay Area from the San Miguel Islands of Portugal. He had created fireworks shows for Portuguese community celebrations and brought the tradition with him to California.

His grandson, Bob Souza, founded Pyro Spectaculars in 1979 and took the family business from cottage industry to international player in the world of fireworks shows.

THIS YEAR’S SHOWS

Pyro Spectaculars shows this Independence Day include six in the Inland area, the biggest of which will be at the University of Redlands, Jim Souza said.

But the one he’s most proud of will be the annual Macy’s show, which this year will take place on the East River in New York and will feature the Brooklyn Bridge.

“We’ll be firing off the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said. “It took us two years to get the permitting for that.”

The Rialto company also will put on the Big Bay Boom in San Diego, which two years ago was the scene of a spectacular error that caused an 18-minute show to go up in one enormous 15-second blast, five minutes before the show was supposed to start.

The company that made the mistake, which was not Pyro Spectaculars, gave San Diego a free show last year, but this year, “they’ve got us back,” Jim Souza said.

Pyro Spectaculars has a long list of achievements to brag about – three Olympics, the Boston Pops Fourth, San Francisco’s Millennium Celebration, Ronald Reagan’s inauguration and the 100th and 125th birthdays of the Statue of Liberty.

In the past couple of years the company has added art installations to its accomplishments.

In 2012, Pyro Spectaculars collaborated with Cai Guo-Qiang, a New York-based artist known for gunpowder drawings and installations, for an explosion event outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

“We set up rockets that shot out from the wall to scare the demons away and that left behind a shape of an alien,” Souza said.

They also worked with artist Judy Chicago to create “A Butterfly for Pomona” in 2012 and “A Butterfly for Brooklyn” in April.

Thousands of road flares created a football-field sized butterfly on the ground, then fireworks made the wings fly and created veins in the wings and waving antenna.

“We’ve worked with her for several years,” Souza said. “We premiered it at Pomona College, kind of under the radar. This one in Brooklyn was the big deal. It was a fantastic 20-minute show.”

PYRO UNIVERSITY

All of those shows require a lot of experts, so Pyro Spectaculars offers Pyro University to teach people how to do it. It takes about two years to become licensed.

Antonio J. Bestard, a Pomona-based criminal defense attorney, went through the program and has worked some 160 shows for the company over the years.

He has traveled around the world helping Pyro Spectaculars stage and fire its shows, but more recently he has been in charge of the show at the Quakes stadium in Rancho Cucamonga. This year, he’s designing and firing the Irwindale show.

“They give me 700 shells and I design it and shoot it,” he said.

He didn’t grow up with a love of fireworks, or blowing things up, he said. It’s more for the appreciation.

“I’m there for the roar of the crowd,” Bestard said. “As a criminal defense attorney, never do you get a thank-you. I’m there for that.”

One of his favorite moments came during a Chinese New Year show in Hong Kong, he said.

A group of Australians spotted the Pyro Spectaculars crew and recognized that even though China had just a few months earlier ended British rule in Hong Kong, the fireworks show was being put on by Americans.

“They saw that we had American patches on our uniforms and on the equipment and started yelling, ‘Hey, they’re Americans. The show’s being put on by Americans,’” Bestard said. “I get goosebumps just telling that story.”